If Snow White was the coming out party for Walt Disney and for feature animation, then Fantasia is the wild, slightly drunk, and fearless after-party in which all caution is thrown to the wind and the Walt Disney company simply decided to go for broke. It is hard to understate just how bizarre a movie Fantasia is. There was nothing …
I stumbled into the world of art house films. I remember vividly my first encounter: I was 17 and a bunch of my friends were fresh out of high school and we had maybe four hours to kill. That naturally led us to the cineplex and there was only two movies that fit with the …
Continue reading Best Art House Films (For Those Who Think Art House Is For Snobs)
(Note: Given all the talk of format with this film, I should note that I could not actually get to a 70mm IMAX screening as the closest one was 45 minutes away. But I did manage to get into a regular IMAX screening. So take from that what you will.) In an age of pre-existing …
There is a reason why it's a cliche to call something a "sophomore slump". As every artist knows it's incredibly hard to follow up whatever made you successful in the first place. Try to stick with what went well the first time, and people accuse you of simply retreading old grounds. Try to venture too …
Ghost World tells the story about a loner kid who doesn't fit in any of the conventional boxes of teenage life and so she embraces her idiosyncrasies and weirdness, using it as a weapon to keep people away. Her weaponized weirdness draws precious few people in and keeps all the "normals" out. We meet Enid (Thora Birch) …
(Previous instalment, "Best Foreign Films (For People Who Aren't Into Foreign Films)") You know how the story goes. A group of friends decide that it's time to try and get cultured and want to catch up on classic cinema. They stumble upon a list of top films like the American Film Institute Top 100 list. They …
Continue reading Best Classic Films (For People Who Think Black & White Films Are Boring)
It's a typical rite of passage. A bunch of kids are sitting in a circle by a campfire or in a room somewhere and the conversation, which was going great, breaks into a lull. And to fill that uncomfortable void someone grabs a flashlight and starts telling a ghost story. Everyone leans in closer, hearing …
My love for all things Disney is no big secret. Over this last weekend my wife has indulged me tremendously as I sat on the edge of my seat refreshing Twitter repeatedly so that I could get the latest updates from the D23 Expo (official Disney fan club convention) as Disney announced the newest animated …
Continue reading Disney’s First Five #1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Fair warning: my ability to be objective on this little review is going to be just a little bit compromised. The reason being is that on a little bit of a whim I decided that it was finally time to take my 2-year old to see her first movie on the big screen which is …
The classic conundrum for me as an avid cinephile is how to get your average movie fan to actually like some of my more esoteric favourites. A constant thought exercise for me is trying to figure out how to get the person who thinks Michael Bay’s filmography represents the pinnacle of cinema to watch and …
Continue reading Best Foreign Movies (For People Who Aren’t Into Foreign Movies)
Homebody Movies 